Queen of the Lanes

Bowling is often an overlooked sport. Arrowhead is among many high schools that lacks a bowling team. But that hasn’t stopped Alyssa Athas, an Arrowhead senior, from taking over the lanes.

This past weekend Athas and her team, Waukesha West High School, played in the state bowling tournament in Madison, Wisconsin. She says there are different areas in which they compete.

She says she plays for the Waukesha West team because Arrowhead doesn’t have a team, so she’s able to co-op with their team.

“There’s singles, team, and doubles. In singles, I took sixth place out of 100, in team we took second out of thirteen, and in doubles we took first out of 300,” Athas says.

Athas says she has been bowling since she was two, so it’s no surprise that she did so well at the state tournament with sixteen years of practice under her belt.

“Everyone in my family bowls, and my grandma runs a bowling league, so bowling has always been a prominent part of my life,” Athas says.

“We practice at Sunset Bowl in Waukesha, which is cool because the dad of one of my teammates is the owner,” she says.

The team isn’t very easy to join for students who do not attend Waukesha West because there are only seven vacant spots, but she says if one team doesn’t have any open spots it isn’t hard to find another school that does.

Athas says her doubles partner is her boyfriend, Mitchell Ortlieb, who is a senior who plays for the Sussex Hamilton team.

“Mitchell has been bowling for four years, and he got into it because he heard an announcement at school and thought it’d be fun to try,” she says.

Athas says she likes that Ortlieb bowls because it’s something they can easily talk about together, and it gives them something to do as a couple.

She says they both get scholarship money for winning first place in doubles, but they haven’t been told what amount they will receive yet.

“[My favorite thing about bowling] is the feeling I get when I hit a strike and win the game for my team,” Athas says.

After a grueling day of bowling competitions and three impressive wins from  Athas, she says she celebrated with her team and Ortlieb’s team at the pool in the hotel they stayed at.

Athas says she is planning on continuing bowling throughout college and has already been scouted for the national team and has been in several televised interviews.

“Bowling has always been an outlet for me. No matter what’s going on at school or at home or with my friends, it’s always a place where I can be myself and do what I love more than anything else: bowl,” she says.